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by kepponen 147 days ago
I would be highly skeptical about Telegram as well. If I would need to select either Whatsapp or Telegram, Whatsapp would be really easy choice for me, considering the background of Durov. For some reason, Telegram is extremely popular in Russia and still has managed to avoid goverment bans.
3 comments
budgefrankly 147 days ago
Telegram isn't even encrypted, at least not in the sense of the on-by-default end-to-end encryption used by WhatsApp, iMessage and Signal. In reality its selling point is that your chat records are placed in foreign jurisdictions so your local police can't easily access them.

https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2024/08/25/telegram...

Ultimately the only way to be completely sure is to use an open-source app like Signal that you've either built yourself from source you've inspected; or sourced pre-built from someone you trust.

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atmanactive 147 days ago
What's worse: Telegram's alleged accessibility to Moscow/FSB, or WhatsApp's proven spying and data selling to anyone?
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kepponen 147 days ago
Tough choice, but I would choose Whatsapp over FSB.
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iberator 147 days ago
Why? There is a low chance of FSB successfully prosecuting you as western Citizen doing illegal/silly things in Telegram.

Big Five of other hand (UK, USA, AUSTRALIA etc) spy network are already working with your western government...

So I would rather be compromised in Russia with 0 chance of extradition there than non 0 to USA, UK GERMANY etc

(Let's say you are producing fake Coco Channel perfumes)

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microtonal 147 days ago
It is well known that secret services of unfriendly countries use material they can get as blackmail. The risk is not getting extradited to Russia, the risk is a Russian agent pressuring someone who works at (say) a defense company to do their bidding.
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kepponen 147 days ago
I'm not big fan of US politics at the moment, but still easily choose US spying over Russia. There is still some difference between these countries.
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BobaFloutist 147 days ago
>There is a low chance of FSB successfully prosecuting you as western Citizen doing illegal/silly things in Telegram

I'm more worried about electoral interference and stoking of social tensions than prosecution, personally.

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mnky9800n 147 days ago
what is wrong with durov?
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